I just read the Grad Students and Digital Education article by Joshua Kim and found the reflections of his participation in the strategic planning process interesting. I do think that the conversations that we intentionally have during periods of transition are incredibly insightful allowing people from various parts of campus to share their stories. Luckily, we continued to do this on our LMS committee and I think it keeps the ideas flowing between IT, Faculty and Support Staff.

In particular Kim’s take on what he heard resonated with me concerning faculty training and support. In ECAR’s 2011 National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, one of the student quotes is telling. “I’d like them to use [a commercial learning management system] to give us more resources outside the classroom, to post grades, and to have discussions outside the classroom. The tools are all there, but they’re not used.” (p. 14)

Most faculty members I know are BUSY, really BUSY. Which is why they need easy, intuitive tools to use. If a LMS is cumbersome, clunky, and archaic, how can they be expected (on a grand scale) to effectively utilize the tool? If the school is locked into an outdated system, then training and extra support services can help them fill in the gap between student expectations and a faculty member’s need for support.

We seem to be at a critical point in distance learning. With the implementations of open source and commercial tools, student privacy issues, administrative flip-flopping, and to top it off legal directives, where are we headed? Oh, don’t forget open education and digital badges too. ALOT will be happening in this mode of education in the next 2-5 years. We will see a number of changes in the aforementioned, certainly. So, how do we move forward?

slide rocket sponsored a webinar today with Cliff Atkinson about the backchannel that occurs during presentations. The backchannel that Cliff focused on is the use of Twitter and how it can inform the speaker of the status of her presentation.

Cliff opened today’s presentation with every speaker’s nightmare about getting negative tweets like “this presentation sucks!” and such. However, as with most technology today, we must find a way to deal with its appearance into “this modern life.” Cliff’s suggestion is to embrace and acknowledge your audience letting them know that you are “on” in Twitter.

Perhaps even use Twitter as a pre-conference survey tool. A “What can I do for you” prior to even showing up. Good idea I think. As Cliff said, acknowledging this side of the backchannel can sort of disarm people and keep “snarky” remarks at a minimum if people know you are going to be reading the posts.

You will need to consider several factors when creating an online syllabus. Remember all of the housekeeping issues you deal with at the beginning of each F2F class? Well, you will need to consider all of these issues in your online course up front…in the syllabus.

See the links below to review what to include and why. Remember your syllabus is the MOST important document in a course. Your course manifesto…

We demoed Nefsis today. I really liked the format and the multiple views for participants. It was easier to use than Live Classroom, but I need to know more about pricing and LMS integration. It allowed annotations and on-the-fly loading of materials, which is good. Cost could make it prohibitive. JUST LEARNED THAT NEFSIS IS NOT MAC COMPATIBLE.

Also, heard about Agora which can be installed in Sakai our LMS. This is extremely important for student/faculty member seamless access. I need to learn more and confirm if our IT will integrate it in our Sakai at some point.